TRUTH-A-NETICS: THE QUACKERY
OF THE E-METER, DIANETICS, THE OCA TESTS, AND MOREIF YOU NEED ANY HELP PSYCHOLOGICALY,
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The Oxford Capacity Analysis (OCA) Debunked

One of Scientology's main recruiting devices is
the free "Personality Test" offered by Scientology organisations
worldwide. According to the book What Is Scientology? (1992 edition),
this test accurately measures the preclear's estimation of ten
different personality traits. These rise markedly in auditing,
reflecting the preclear's gains. Preclears report being calmer, more
stable, more energetic and more outgoing as a direct result of auditing
and scores on the OCA furnish corroborative data…

A vital tool in Expanded Dianetics is the Oxford Capacity Analysis. An
important use of this profile is to improve specific personality traits
with Expanded Dianetics procedures. The OCA helps locate deep-seated
pockets of aberration which can then be addressed and erased with these
precise auditing techniques. [What Is Scientology? (1992), pp. 163, 220]

The way this works is simple. Scientology recruiters stand on the
streets outside a Scientology office, stopping passers-by to offer free
"IQ tests". Anyone who expresses interest is invited inside the
building to take the test, which consists of a 200-question sheet on
which answers can be marked "Yes," "No" or "Maybe". The test is in many
ways not unlike the personality tests you see in women's magazines, and
is about as scientific (in other words, not very).

Having completed the questionnaire, the testee is then given an
"analysis" of the results. Scientology is prescribed as the solution to
any problems identified by the test. At this point, the testee is
offered a Scientology book or course (for a fee, naturally). Many
people — probably a majority — refuse this offer, but for some it marks
the start of their career as a Scientologist.

The OCA was originally issued under Scientologist Ray Kemp's name,
which was later redacted in favor of anonymous "HCO Staff" and much
later (since 1968) attributed to Hubbard alone. In 1959, the OCA was
reworked and republished to take account of Hubbard's new drive to make
"Clears" (Scientologists without any mental blockages). Hubbard
dubbed it "Scientometric Testing", an obvious allusion to more
conventional psychometric testing.

For many years now, the answer key to the test has been made available
on the Internet. Several critics of Scientology have completed
the test with a perfect score to see what would happen. One such
person described the following:

" One day, out of curiosity, I used the grid to compose a 'perfect'
test. I gave the highest score for each question and scaled it out,
just as if someone had taken the score. I then graphed it out and ...
low and behold! There was no way to reach the top of the scale! The
scale goes up to '100'
but there wasn't a single column that was capable of reaching 100! None
of the columns could total 100, even with perfect scores! (The highest
possible score on one column was 98.) Not only that, but
'responsibility' dipped noticeably low! With a perfect score!"

"So even if a person was 'perfect' according to the OCA score, the
graph line wavered across the top, not reaching 100 and dropping on
"responsibility," which of course gives the "evaluator" a chance to
say, 'Well, good scores here but not quite perfect - I see you are
wavering here - and I see your low point is responsibility.' What is
especially fraudulent is that this "test" is constantly used on on
people in auditing. It is often taken at the end of a rundown or an
intensive. Thus EVEN INSIDE, WITH SCIENTOLOGY you cannot hit the top,
let
alone bring that that "responsibility" column up to where it belongs.
That is why the scoring grid is 'confidential.' It is a fraud. "

And so like
everything else about Scientology, reaching the top is impossible by
design. If you're curious about the answers to the test, Operation
Clambake has made them available. Even though the answers have been
made known for well over a decade or more, The Church of Scientology
will never change the questions because they were written by L. Ron
Hubbard, and their slave-like obedience to him never wavers.

When the British Psychological Society evaluated the OCA for Sir John
Foster in 1971, it summed up the immoral and irresponsible consequences
of the OCA and the way in which it is delivered:

"No reputable psychologist would accept the procedure of pulling
people off the street with a leaflet, giving them a 'personality test'
and reporting back in terms that show the people to be 'inadequate',
'unacceptable' or in need of 'urgent' attention. In a clinical setting
a therapist would only discuss a patient's inadequacies with him with
the greatest of circumspection and support, and even then only after
sufficient contact for the therapist-patient relationship to have been
built up. To report back a man's inadequacies to him in an automatic,
impersonal fashion is unthinkable in responsible professional practice.
To do so is potentially harmful. It is especially likely to be harmful
to the nervous introspective people who would be attracted by the
leaflet in the first place."

If Scientology courses prove to be of no help, such people may well end
up in a worse psychological state than when they started. Worse still,
many of those who undertake the OCA but do not buy anything from
Scientology may have their insecurities reinforced by the personality
test's results. They would end up as collateral damage of Scientology's
recruitment campaign, exploited and discarded. One particularly
unpleasant example was cited by the 1965 Anderson inquiry into
Scientology:

'In addition to "enlightening" people, the test has also been used to
intimidate them into joining Scientology. The Australian Inquiry
reported that one boy who took the test claims they told him he had a
defective character, was mentally unstable, and would have a mental
breakdown unless he joined Scientology. (They also suggested that he
had homosexual tendencies.) When he refused to join nonetheless, people
at the Org took turns for a year writing him personal letters to remind
him of his difficulties as reflected on the test, and his need to join
them to remedy it."

Unfortunately, Hubbard clearly cared not a jot for this sort of
outcome: he told his followers to regard non-Scientologists (or "wogs")
purely as "prospects" and "raw meat", of concern only when they are
paying fees to Scientology organizations.

A very thorough debunking of the OCA tests can be found here:
http://www.xenu.net/archive/oca/oca.html

EMBARRASSING E-METER FACTS

The E-Meter is the device used in Dianetics/Scientology auditing.
"E-Meter" is short for "Hubbard Electropsychometer".
The official definition according to Scientology is "An electronic
instrument for measuring the psychological and emotional state of the
preclear and any changes that take place in this state. (from The
Creation of Human Ability)

Well, that certainly sounds impressive...almost as though the machine
could measure thought, or maybe even read your mind! The truth of
course, is much less impressive. The E-Meter Scientology uses is really
no different that a type of device that has been used by Chiropractors
since at least the 1920s! The E-Meter is really a GSR (Galvinistic Skin
Resistance) Meter that measures skin resistance. It's a type of
primitive lie detector. In fact, similar devices were sold in magazines
and comic books for years!

A Chiropractor named Volney Mathison actually invented the E-Meter.
After Hubbard and Mathison had a falling out, Hubbard discontinued use
of the E-Meter in 1954, calling it a "gimick". But when two
Scientologists were able to build Mathison's E-Meter 4 years later, the
E-Meter was re-introduced to Scientology. Eventually a patent with
Hubbard's name (falsley)listed as the inventor was granted by the U.S.
Pantent Office.

The current cost of the
E-Meter is around $3800 and costs the Church of Scientology about $40
to produce via outsourcing to Japan. One has to question why the high
markup. The device is mere a Wheatsone Bridge circuit with a V/U meter
and a couple of electrodes.

M1 Moving-coil meter capable of reading from 0
to 100 microamps at full scale deflection.

A transistor radio was more complicated to build than the E-Meter!

Scientologists and Hubbard will tell you that the E-Meter infallible.
It is said that it never fails to pick out the date on which an
incident occurred. Scientologists will tell you to the exact second
when something happened to them a trillions of years ago. The E-Meter
is used by Scientologists to uncover past lives, in fact.

But apparently, it is less than perfect in
picking dates in their current life. Its failure in this task is what
caused author Alan Levy, who wrote a piece on Scientology for LIFE magazine, to become
disenchanted with the organization. (Along with the fact that his New
York contract said Grades V-VII would cost him $390 at Saint Hill, but
when he got there he discovered it was $3,150 "plus living expenses.")

Alan Levy's problems in Scientology started when he was told to use the
E-meter to locate the date on which he had a fight with his wife.
(Present one, current life.) Without the meter, he knew the year was
1958, and that it was a Sunday morning in March.

Although he suggested to his auditor that they consult a calendar, he
was told, "There's no need for that.... The E-meter will find out for
us." The meter "found out" that the fight occurred on March 18. But
when Alan Levy checked an almanac at a bookstore in East Grinstead, he
discovered that March 18, 1958 fell on Tuesday, not Sunday.

Levy said, "It seems pathetic to me still, and terribly precarious,
that my failure to perform so simple a journalistic chore -- under
other circumstances I would have automatically looked up the date --
could have kept me half tied to Scientology, the deep-probing auditing
sessions and the damned E-meter.... I am sure that among the millions
of words ... [Hubbard] has written, there are some to convince me that
the engram I unlocked did happen on a Tuesday -- in another life -- or
that March 18 did fall on a Sunday when I was in the womb. But
thankfully it no longer matters."

A number of government witnesses in the Food and Drug Administration's
case against the meter also agreed that its functioning was
considerably less than perfect. George Montgomery, Chief of the
Measurement Engineering Division of the National Bureau of Standards,
and Dr. John I. Lacey, Chairman of the Department of Psychophysiology
and Neurophysiology at Fels Research Institute in Yellow Springs,
stated that the E-meter "failed to meet the commonly accepted criterion
by which such an instrument is judged."

This was because:

>The E-meter has no device to control the constancy of current.

>Holding a can in the hand permits great variations in the area of
the skin in contact with the metal electrodes, and would allow great
variation in the amount of actively sweaty tissue that is in contact
with it.

>The instrument is subject to polarization.

>It is not a quantitative instrument due to uncontrollable
variations in skin contact and current.

It's actually good at measuring how well a person squeezes the
electrodes, and not much else.

The E-Meter's lineage as a lie dector becomes much more apprent when it
is used during "Sec Checks" in Scientology.

A very thorough debunking of the E-Meter can be found here:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/

DIANETICS: THE MODERN PSUEDO-SCIENCE OF MATERIAL WEALTH

In the following part of Jeff Jacobson's excellent essay, Jeff looks at
the claims of 'scientific fact' made by Hubbard. Using scientific
methodology and inquiry Jacobson shows how there is NO scientific basis
to support Hubbard's claims.

http://xenu.phys.uit.no/lrhbare/science.html

Science and Dianetics

L. Ron Hubbard constantly makes the claim that dianetics is a
"scientific fact." In fact, he makes that claim 35 times in Dianetics.
For example, "All our facts are functional and these facts are
scientific facts, supported wholly and completely by laboratory
evidence."[1]

Hubbard shows that he regards correct scientific experimentation to a
high degree by carefully hedging his approval of another scientific
experiment done by someone else. This test was conducted in a hospital
to see whether unattended children became sick more often than attended
children.

"The test... seems to have been conducted with proper controls,"[2] he
cautiously states, not having apparently seen the entire written report.

In The Phoenix Lectures Hubbard is also critical of the early
psychiatric work of Wundt in the latter 1800's; "Scientific methodology
was actually not, there and then, immediately classified... what they
did was unregulated, uncontrolled, wildcat experiments, fuddling around
collecting enormous quantities of data..."[3] And in a lecture in 1954,
Hubbard complained loudly and long about how poorly psychologists and
psychoanalysts conducted research and how they neglected to maintain
proper records.[4]

I am similarly cautious about Hubbard's experiments, especially since
there seems to be no record of how they were done, what exactly the
results were, what kind of control group was used, whether the
experiments were double blind, how many subjects there were in each
experiment, and other pertinent data. I have asked ranking
scientologists for this data, and have fervently searched for it
myself, and have yet to see it. This brings up the question about
whether Hubbard can call his original research science.

And, in keeping with the need to understand each word we use, it brings
up the question of just what science is. What does it take for someone
to legitimately make the claim that his ideas are scientifically
proven? When can something be called a scientific fact?

As with many subjects in life, the deeper one looks into science, the
more complex it gets. There is not even one single agreed upon
definition for science in the scientific community. Those people who
seek to establish a unifying definition are dealing in what is called
the philosophy of science.

One of the most respected and most influential of these is Karl Popper.
Popper claims that no theory can be called scientific unless it can be
demonstrated that deliberate attempts to prove a theory wrong are
unsuccessful. Thus, a theory must open itself up to criticism from the
scientific community to see whether it can withstand critical scrutiny.

Popper's formulation for scientific validation is;

1.It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly
every theory - if we look for confirmations.

2.Confirmations should count only if they are the result of RISKY
PREDICTIONS; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in
question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with
the theory - an event which would have refuted the theory.

3.Every 'good' scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain
things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4.A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is
non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people
often think) but a vice.

5.Every genuine TEST of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to
refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of
testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to
refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6.Confirming evidence should not count EXCEPT WHEN IT IS THE RESULT OF
A GENUINE TEST OF THE THEORY; and this means that it can be presented
as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory (I now
speak in such cases of 'corroborating evidence'.)

7.Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still
upheld by their admirers - for example by introducing AD HOC some
auxiliary assumption, or by re-interpreting the theory AD HOC in such a
way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible,
but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of
destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status.[5]

The falsifiability approach is a good one, because no theory can be
proven unless every case possible is individually examined to see that
it applies to every possible case, which is normally impossible to do.
For instance, a popular example of a "fact" in science classrooms of
the 19th century was that "all swans are white." This was, however,
shown to be untrue when a variety of swan in South America was
discovered to be black.

This "fact" was proven wrong by a previously unknown exception to the
rule, and this example points out that it is never entirely possible to
prove a theory in the positive without examining every possible case of
that theory. (It is, of course, not possible to completely falsify many
theories also, but for the sake of brevity I would refer the reader to
Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery for further arguments on this
subject.)

Let us go now momentarily to one of Hubbard's scientific claims:

Its [the reactive mind's] identity can now be certified by any
technician in any clinic or in any group of men. Two hundred and
seventy-three individuals have been examined and treated, representing
all the various types of inorganic mental illness and the many
varieties of psychosomatic ills. In each one this reactive mind was
found operating, its principles unvaried.[6]

After the brief previous discussion of science, we can begin to
question Hubbard's claim to scientific validity. Exactly who were these
273 people? Were they believers in Hubbard's theories or a
representative sample of the public at large? Exactly how was the
experiment conducted that proved the existence of the reactive mind?
This needs to be known so others can try it to test for variables that
Hubbard may have overlooked, to see if his experiment produced a
statistical fluke, and to help in conducting experiments to try to
disprove the theory. The more times an experiment is conducted, the
more likely it is shown to be true, keeping in mind of course that no
matter how many times an expedition went looking for white swans, it
would find them, so long as they didn't go to South America.

Was Hubbard seeking confirmation in his experiments or was he
attempting to refute his theory, as Popper suggests a true man of
science would do? Designing a test that will provide confirmation of a
thesis is not difficult. Below is such a test.

A REAL EXPERIMENT COMES UP DRY
Hubbard does mention an experiment to perform that can prove the
existence of engrams:

If you care to make the experiment you can take a man, render him
"unconscious," hurt him and give him information. By Dianetic
technique, no matter what information you gave him, it can be
recovered. This experiment should not be carelessly conducted because
YOU MIGHT RENDER HIM INSANE.[7] {emphasis in original}
Three researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, decided
in 1950 to give this experiment a try.[8]

If an individual should be placed, by some means of [sic] other, into
an unconscious state, then, according to traditional psychology, no
retention of the events occurring about him should take place and
consequently, no reports of such events can be elicited from the
individual, no matter what methods of elicitation are employed
(hypothesis I). According to dianetics, retention should take place
with high fidelity and, therefore an account of the events can be
elicited by means of dianetic auditing (hypothesis II).[9]

The Dianetic Research Foundation of Los Angeles cooperated with the
experimenters by providing a subject and several qualified auditors.
The subject was a 30 year old male who worked for the foundation and
was considered a good candidate for the experiment by the foundation
since he had "sonic" recall and had been audited. The experiment was
carefully laid out according to dianetic theory and was at all times
done under the cooperation and suggestions of the Foundation.

The subject was knocked unconscious with .75 grams of sodium pentathol
by Dr. A. Davis, MD, who is one of the authors of the experiment. When
the subject was found to be unconscious, Mr. Lebovits was left alone
with the subject while two recording devices recorded the session. Mr.
Lebovits read a 35-word section of a physics book to the subject,
administering pain during the reading of the last 18 words. He then
left the room, and the patient was allowed to rest for another hour, at
which time he was awakened.

Two days later, the professional auditors from the Dianetic Research
Foundation began to audit the subject, trying to elicit the engram, or
recording of the spoken text that according to dianetic theory resided
in the subject's reactive mind. The auditors did elicit several
possible passages from the subject and supplied these to the
experimenters.

The results were that "comparison with the selected passage shows that
none of the above-quoted phrases, nor any other phrases quoted in the
report, bear any relationship at all to the selected passage. Since the
reception of the first interim report, in November 1950, the
experimenter tried frequently and repeatedly to obtain further reports,
but so far without uccess."[10]

The experimenters concluded by stating that while their test case was
only one subject, they felt that the experiment was well done and
strongly suggested that the engram hypothesis was not validated. I know
of no other scientifically valid experiment besides this one by
non-dianeticists which attempted to prove Hubbard's engram theory.

Here was an experiment designed to confirm the engram hypothesis which,
according to Hubbard, was a "scientific fact." Apparently (or, perhaps,
IF) Hubbard did this test he got positive results. But this is a good
example for showing that even one type of experiment should be
conducted several times in order to be sure of its outcome. Perhaps
some neutral party today could be persuaded to attempt it again.

There is one point I consider the most damning to Hubbard's attempt to
cloak dianetics in scientific validity. While he seems to be inviting
others to conduct their own investigations (and thus seems to be open
to attempts to refute his claims), he never explains his own
experimental methods, thus closing the door to the scientific
community's ability to attempt to verify his claims.

In order to evaluate Hubbard's claims, the scientific community would
seek to replicate his experiments to see if the same results were
obtained and to check for possible influences on the experiment Hubbard
may have overlooked. They would also, as Popper suggests, try to shoot
holes in the theory, either on a logical basis or by conducting
refutational experiments.

If Hubbard really respected science, he would have welcomed and helped
the scientific community in its attempts to both support and attempt to
refute his theories. But he and his successors in dianetics and
Scientology refuse to join in scientific debate over the merits of
Hubbard's ideas, maintaining a dogmatic rather than scientific stance.

My attempts to get the experiments from the Church of Scientology have
been in vain. I have never heard of anyone who has seen them, nor even
anyone who claimed to know how they were conducted. It is mainly for
this reason, I believe, that dianetics cannot claim scientific
validity. Until Hubbard's supposed original experiments are released to
the public, dianetics can only be called science fiction.

As a footnote, the only references I found to Hubbard's actual notes on
any original experiments were on taped lectures by Hubbard in 1950 and
1958. He stated in 1950 that "my records are in little notebooks,
scribbles, in pencil most of them.

Names and addresses are lost... there was a chaotic picture..." A
certain Ms. Benton asked Hubbard for his notes to validate his
research, but when she saw them, "she finally threw up her hands in
horror and started in on the project [validation] clean."[11] In
another lecture in 1958 he explained "the first broad test"[12] of
dianetics, wherein he would audit some patients of Dr. Yankeewitz at
the Oak Knoll Hospital without the knowledge of the doctor.

Hubbard called these shoddily done tests "significant", but added that
they are "unfortunately not totally available to us".[13]

If this is the type of material Hubbard was basing his "scientific
facts" on, then there is probably no need to even see them to be able
to reject them with good conscience.

You can download a free copy of the 3 different Ebooks "The Bare Faced
Messiah", "The Scandal of Scientology" and "A Piece of Blue Sky" as
simple text files. The Ebooks are in notepad which is included with
Windows. Even people with Linux should be able to read them!
Download by clicking here:

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